Quote:President Trump is calling to pump $1.5 trillion into fixing America’s infrastructure while streamlining the often-cumbersome permitting process, as part of a $4 trillion budget plan being unveiled Monday.

In the runup to the budget release, the president tweeted: "This will be a big week for Infrastructure. After so stupidly spending $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is now time to start investing in OUR Country!"

Quote:Under the plan, $200 billion of the $1.5 trillion in proposed spending would be federal dollars, which a senior administration official said would come from "reductions in other areas of the budget." The plan calls on state and local governments and the private sector to put up most of the funding. The federal funding would be used to match local spending, provide “incentives” and expand loan programs.

The plan also would boost investment for projects in rural America -- including transportation, broadband, water, waste, power, flood management and ports -- by $50 billion in a bid to address criticism from some Republican senators that the Trump administration's initial emphasis on public-private partnerships would do little to help those areas.

But the Trump administration is casting another part of the plan as equally vital – streamlining the permitting process, which a senior administration official described as “fundamentally broken.”

That component aims to cut the permitting process for new projects from upwards of 10 years to just two years.

To get there, officials envision a single federal agency making decisions on infrastructure bids – with decision-making consuming about 21 months and permitting consuming the remaining three.

Doing so, officials said, would remove “duplicative” elements that currently lead to second-guessing, delays and other problems when multiple agencies weigh in on the same decision.

The president, in remarks last week to Republican lawmakers at a West Virginia retreat, emphasized efforts to "streamline the horrible approval process — roadways that take 12, 13, 14 years to get approved."

"We used to build them in three months, and now it takes years and years of approvals. We're going to bring that down, ideally, to one year. Two years is our goal, but one year is our real goal," Trump said.

Quote:Trump has repeatedly blamed the "crumbling" state of the nation's roads and highways for preventing the American economy from reaching its full potential. Many in Washington believe that Trump should have begun his term a year ago with an infrastructure push, one that could have garnered bipartisan support or, at minimum, placed Democrats in a bind for opposing a popular political measure.

1. Be careful wirh streamlining permitting TOO far. This could result in unrealistic construction timelines and HSW problems. The private sector is creative and efficient, but has a tendency to take shortcuts.

(02-12-2018 11:00 AM)Marc Mensa Wrote: He's asking states and the private sector to pick up 1.3 trillion of his 1.5 trillion dollar plan? Good luck.

Pretty simple reasoning... The federal government will give you this much money but you need to pony up the rest for this highway that resides in your state...

Very few states have that kind of money. This isn't going to work unless taxes are raised.

I think if an assessment is done say for I65 and there are bridges and road work to be done from Tennessee to Kentucky, the cost is a billion, the Fed government will give some money and the state does the rest. The state taxes gasoline for things of this nature.